In the past, a preparation is usually made by smearing material such as cells on a slide glass. According to this method, the material is captured by excoriation or centesis and then smeared on a slide glass.
Then the slide glass with the material thereon is preserved in, for example, dyeing solution. Thereafter a mounting medium is applied thereon to seal the material, and a cover glass is placed thereon.
In this prior art, the work to smear the material on the slide glass is completed by hand, thus the material could easily be destroyed and deformed. Further, when the material is preserved in the solution, much of it drops from the slide glass into the solution. Also, a lot of expreience and skill are required to accomplish this smear method.
To make the preparation easier, Japanese Patent Application No. 61-250188, for example, introduces a new method wherein a suspension medium including material is drawn through a polycarbonate membrane filter, which is transparent, has a thickness about 5 to 10 .mu.m and innumerable microscopic pores are created through the filter. After the material is captured on the filter as the suspension medium is drawn through the pores, a number of needed solutions such as dyeing solutions are applied to the material.
According to this new method, since it is unnecessary to smear the material on the slide glass, the problem that the material is destroyed and deformed can be eased and the outlines of the material can better be recognized as they naturally are.
After the dyeing process is completed, the material is supposed to be placed on a slide glass to prepare a specimen preparation. To make the preparation with this new method, however, either the material has to be transferred to the slide glass (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,395,493), or the filter with the material thereon should be placed on the slide glass and the filter has to be melted by a melting liquid, eliminating the pores and leaving the material on the slide glass.
When the material collected on the filter is transferred on the slide glass, which is done by pressing the filter onto the slide glass as to transcribe the material to the slide glass, much of it is destroyed and deformed by the pressure. Further, by this so-called transcribing process, it is possible that only a small percentage of the whole material can be transcribed onto the slide glass. As far as the other method is concerned, the material would be shrunken and faded by the melting liquid.
Concerning these problems, it is desirable that a specimen preparation can be prepared only by placing a filter with material thereon onto a slide glass, eliminating the need for transcribing and melting processes. However, when a specimen preparation is prepared by this method, the outlines of the pores of the filter are recognized, and they double with the outlines of the material, so that an examination of the material will be inaccurate.
Therefore, the major object of the present invention is to optically eliminate the pores of the filter, to eliminating the need for the transcribing and melting processes, to provide a slide (not necessarily a glass slide) and a cover glass that enable you to accurately examine the material, and to provide a method of preparing a specimen preparation using the semitransparent slide.